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Wilbur F. Sadler, Jr. 



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'* I I OW, THEN, SHALL WE MEASURE 

THE LIFE OF A MAN? 



IN DEEDS NOT IN YEARS. 

IN HEART THROBS NOT IN CLOCK TICKS. 

BY THE MEMORY HE LEAVES. AFTER PASS- 
ING ON. OF NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT FOR THE 
BENEFIT OF HIS FELLOWMEN. 

BY SUCH PROCESS WE FIND THE LIFE OF 

WILBUR F. SADLER, Jr. 



TO HAVE BEEN THAT OF THE FULLEST MEAS- 
URE OF A MAN. 

HIS UNSELFISH PUBLIC-SPIRITED ACCOM- 
PLISHMENTS ARE HIS BEST MONUMENT, MORE 
LASTING AND MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN GENIUS 
COULD FASHION FROM PUREST MARBLE." 



<D^m0rial anft ft^anluttnttfi 



community strides to its 
destiny, \Yith movement 
slow or fast, according as 
it is led by its big men. 
These latter blaze the way 
— clear obstacles from the 
path — press into dim un- 
charted regions with venture- 
some spirit and unshaken faith 
in order that to the community 
which they serve may be 
show^n a clearly illumined road 
over w^hich to pass to progress 
and to success. The quicken- 
ing of Trenton's civic spirit 
within the last decade, and the 
conservation of her priceless histori- 
cal heritages, are due in a very appre- 
ciable degree to the efforts of such a 
man, — a man of ideals and of pro- 
phetic vision, a man to vs^hom it w^as 
given to construct w^ith the upbuilding 
hand of the statesman, a man of heart 
and brain devoted to the community 



weal, — General Wilbur Fisk Sadler, 
Junior. 

I do but speak the truth when I say 
that the citizens of Trenton could not 
have lost a more unselfish advocate 
and benefactor than he. To attest in 
my feeble w^ay to that w^hich he has 
achieved for the city of his adoption, 
and to cite his w^orks that will endure 
through the years as evidences of his 
beneficent heart and of his exalted 
public spirit, is the object of this mem- 
orial tribute. I feel impelled by a 
sense of public duty to emphasize 
w^hat have been his accomplishments 
in bettering the lot of his fellow^-tow^ns- 
men, and I w^ould be much the ingrate 
vs^ere I not to add here my appreciation 
of his personal friendship, of his help- 
fulness and loyalty to me during the 
six years of my mayoralty. 1 cheer- 
fully give w^itness that it w^as he w^hose 
advice and exhortation led me from 
quiet mercantile pursuits into the tur- 
moil of city politics to w^ork for the 
establishment of the Commission 



Form of Government in this city; that 
it was his encouragement and aid that 
has sustained me in my efforts in be- 
h a 1 f of Trenton's waterways and 
w^aterfront development and many 
other civic enterprises; and that it 
was due to him more than to anyone 
else among the city's private citizen- 
ship that Trenton has attained a new 
birth and life, and has left its old con- 
servative moorings and prejudices to 
become a real city w^ith modernity and 
advanced ideals stamped upon it. 

That to me seems to be the most ap- 
propriate theme in discussing General 
Sadler's activities, namely, the effect 
of his thought upon the almost provin- 
cial Trenton w^hich he encountered 
w^hen he came here in 1 898. 

But let us first trace the beginnings of 
this interesting personality. 

Son of an eminent jurist, college-bred, 
his family holding first rank in their 
home tow^n of Carlisle, Pa., young 
Sadler, after his education at Dickin- 
son College, w^ent to w^ork in a 



machine shop for a year. That was 
the characteristic Sadler we afterw^ard 
knew^, plain — democratic — no frills — 
dow^nright business. In 1 893, he built 
33 miles of street railw^ays in Schuyl- 
kill County, Pa., w^hich betoken 
brains, skill and nerve in a chap just 
turned tw^enty-tw^o. Thereafter, until 
the year he came to Trenton, Sadler 
proved an adept in railroad construc- 
tion and laid dow^n a number of big 
lines in Pennsylvania. 

He came to Trenton with, as he said 
oftimes, **$75 and a load of sand." 
It must have been character sand, the 
**sand" of a game man, and it lasted 
him a lifetime. 

Trenton w^as still in the one-horse 
stage — cut off from car-line communi- 
cation w^ith the contiguous farming 
territory — when Sadler settled here to 
construct suburban raiWays. Forth- 
w^ith he changed the tow^n's business, 
the tow^n's aspect and the tow^n's habits 
of thought. With his construction of 
the Trenton, Princeton and Law^rence- 



ville line, he connected the richest 
farming section and the most populous 
borough town of Mercer County with 
the city of Trenton — a stroke of good 
fortune for Trenton and its merchants. 

He built the Yardley, Morrisville and 
Trenton RaiWay w^hich tapped Bucks 
County and poured her trade and her 
commodities into the lap of Trenton. 

He built the Philadelphia, Bristol and 
Trenton Railw^ay w^hich gave access 
to the section bordering on the low^er 
Delaware, as w^ell as uniting Trenton 
and Philadelphia by trolley. In short, 
Mr. Sadler as an individual promoter 
and constructer, led a netw^ork of trol- 
ley lines into Trenton, converted the 
conservative old city into a hub and 
mart of the territory w^ithin a 20-mile 
radius, forced Trenton out of its shell, 
and quickened business here to an ex- 
tent chargeable to no other man, alive 
or dead. Creating Bigger Trenton: 
that was the feat of Wilbur F. Sadler, 
Junior, and if he had accomplished 
nothing else for this community, it 

10 



would entitle him to the undying grat- 
itude of every citizen. 

But he ^vas soon to attain fresh laurels. 
In I 906 he was elected a director of 
the Broad Street National Bank, to 
which institution he brought a breadth 
of view^ and a capacity of initiative 
and enterprise that v^as destined to 
flow^er in countless w^ays, and w^hich 
eventually placed the Broad Street 
National Bank in the forefront of the 
banking institutions of the state. 
Elected to its presidency, he suggested 
and supervised the construction of the 
handsome addition to the bank wrhich 
is distinctively an esthetic asset of the 
city. 

In I 908 Mr. Sadler vv^as appointed a 
member of Governor Fort's staff, and 
in 1 909 he w^as made Adjutant Gen- 
eral of the State of New^ Jersey. In 
characteristic fashion he mastered the 
problems that beset the National 
Guard, and w^as responsible for the 
reorganization of the state's citizen 
soldiery, placing it in the van of mili- 

11 



tary usefulness and efficiency. And it 
was his herculean labors in behalf of 
the mobilization of the New Jersey 
troops for Mexican service that gave 
him his death blow. He fell — a mar- 
tyr to duty — in service as glorious as if 
his end had come upon the battle- 
field. 

General Sadler saw Trenton's needs 
and its possibilities with a clearer eye 
than most of his contemporaries. He 
lent his force and influence to the 
movement to establish Commission 
Government here, because he felt that 
under the Commission plan Trenton 
could better realize the promise of an 
effulgent civic destiny, in w^hich busi- 
ness and labor w^ould derive in just 
proportions their share of the common 
prosperity and advancement. He, 
more than any one else in this city, 
contributed to the rehabilitation of the 
Chamber of Commerce, for he visual- 
ized that organization as an arm, not 
only of business, but also of a civic 
spirit keen for community w^ell-being, 
and for municipal betterments in all 
phases. 

12 



We come now to that achievement of 
his which stands forth as a monu- 
mental piece of civic patriotism: his 
successful endeavors to reclcdm the 
w^aste lands in the rear of the State 
Capitol, resulting in the creation of 
Mahlon Stacy Park. I need not cite 
here the long w^eary hours he gave to 
bring his plan into being, nor the days 
of checks and discouragements w^hich 
the light of success finally broke upon. 

He gave to Trenton in that beautiful 
park a pledge and a token of his affec- 
tion for the city of his adoption. In 
bringing Mahlon Stacy Park to actual- 
ity, he made this generation of Tren- 
tonians and the generations to come 
his debtors in gratitude. TTie restora- 
tions of the Masonic Temple and the 
Old Barracks, concomitant projects 
with the Stacy Park scheme, were his 
brain-children, conceived in the high- 
est patriotism and born in the glow^ of 
his constructive genius. In the Ma- 
sonic Temple, the Old Barracks cind 
the Douglass House projects. General 

13 



Sadler has performed invaluable labor 
in preserving the priceless relics of 
Trenton's historic past, and posterity, 
more than the living, vv^ill appreciate 
how^ great the service, howr farsighted, 
hovsr admirable the man! 

And I devoutly pray that the day be 
not far distant w^hen the city of Tren- 
ton w^ill express in substantial form 
the debt vv^hich it ovv^es its distinguish- 
ed departed son. General Wilbur Fisk 
Sadler, Junior. 



14 



Introduced by Mayor Frederick W. Donnelly 
and adopted by 
The Board of Commissioners of Trenton, N. J. 

WHEREAS, in the death of General Wilbur F. 
Sadler, Jr., there has been removed from Trenton's 
most valued citizenship a personage whose achieve- 
ments in behalf of his fellowmen in this state and 
this city have proclaimed him a most able leader in 
laudable public movements, and the possessor of 
statesmanlike judgment and vision in the disposi- 
tion of the diversified problems of his official life; 
and 

WHEREAS, the Board of Commissioners of the 
city of Trenton have long marked and applauded in 
particular those activities of General Sadler which 
have directly benefited the city of Trenton and its 
inhabitants in bringing to successful fruition his 
project to give to them a river front redeemed to 
purposes of utility, recreation and enjoyment, by 
which project an unsightly waste tract was con- 
verted into the now beautiful Mahlon Stacy Park; 
and 

WHEREAS, the Board of Commissioners of the 
city of Trenton recognize that through the patient, 
untiring efforts of General Sadler much of Trenton's 
historical prestige, that had dwindled and suffered 
diminution, was revived and revitalized by General 
Sadler's work of restoring and rededicating the 
hallowed shrines of Trenton's historic fame; and 

WHEREAS, the Board of Commissioners of the 
city of Trenton fully recognize the loss that Tren- 
ton, in its commercial and its civic spheres, has suf- 

16 



fered by the death of General Sadler, and do there- 
fore desire to give perpetuity in proper form to 
the Board's assessment of his value as a citizen, and 
of his unselfish labors in the interests of the city of 
Trenton; therefore be it 

RESOLVED, That these resolutions be spread 
upon the minutes of the Board of Commissioners, 
and that a copy be sent to the family of the 
deceased. 

FRED'K W. DONNELLY, 

EDWARD W. LEE, 

WM. F. BURK, 

J. R. FELL, 

G. B. LaBARRE. 

Adopted by the following vote: Messrs. Burk, Donnelly, 
President, Fell LaBarre, Lee — 5. 

Adopted December 1st, 1916. 

LEON D. HIRSCH. 

City Clerk. 



16 



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